


a goddamn one-way ticket to the goddamn history books

by outruntheavalanche



Series: Author's Favorites [13]
Category: Pitch (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, F/M, Gen, Ghosts, Haunted Ballparks, Trick or Treat 2018, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-07 04:11:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16401071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outruntheavalanche/pseuds/outruntheavalanche
Summary: Ginny’s been marked for stardom since the day she was born.





	a goddamn one-way ticket to the goddamn history books

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elegantstupidity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elegantstupidity/gifts).



> Happy Halloween, [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/elegantstupidity/profile)[**elegantstupidity**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/elegantstupidity/)!
> 
> Ginny’s opinions on the DH do not reflect that of the author’s. #TeamDH 
> 
> Thanks to [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/blastellanos/profile)[**blastellanos**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/blastellanos/) for looking at this! 
> 
> This was supposed to have more than just vaguely implied Ginny/Mike, so I'm probably going to have to write a sequel at some point. 
> 
> Title from "Song For Roger Maris," by the Mountain Goats.

All ballparks have ghosts. It’s just a fact of life, in the way DH is the appendix of the batting order—totally unnecessary and better off being surgically removed—and you don’t pitch Mike Trout down in the zone…or anywhere in the strikezone, really. 

You might think Yankee Stadium’s the most haunted of all of them, given the Pinstripers’ storied history and the lore that surrounds the team, but it’s actually the Trop. Why else do you think no one really likes playing in St. Petersberg? It’s not _all_ because of the turf or the dome. At last count, the Trop contained six vengeful ghosts, a revenant that got stuck in a bathroom stall, and one ghoul who’s singlehandedly responsible for the low attendance records. (Ghouls are vicious little creatures. Oakland’s got one too.)

Yankee Stadium’s actually on the low end for ghosts as far as New York baseball teams go. The Mets are currently being haunted by no less than three of their ex-GMs, Gil Hodges, the third Mr. Met, and an angry fan that had his ashes spread in the Citi Field parking lot in a final act of vengeance against the team he both loved _and_ hated so passionately. 

Like most teams, the Padres currently have a ghost problem. Unlike most teams, the Padres have had no one to smoke the ghosts out and cleanse the stadium. Ballpark ghosts are resilient and it usually takes a few go-arounds before they lose their hold on the stadium they’re haunting. The Padres just don’t have that kind of manpower.

Or, at least, they haven’t until recently.

Not every team is fortunate enough to call up a rookie who’s already an accredited ghost hunter. But Ginny Baker is just that.

She’s already got four kills credited to her name when she gets called up: two poltergeists, a ghoul, and a revenant. Usually, most rookie call-ups have one, maybe two at the most. 

Ginny’s been marked for stardom since the day she was born.

*** 

Ginny’s trained her entire life for this moment. While most other girls were raised by their dads on other dreams—to be a doctor, a teacher, president—Bill Baker brought her up to want only one thing. To be a closer. 

Closers got the job done. 

All Ginny’s dad wanted for her was fame and notoriety. And all Ginny wanted was for her dad to finally be happy and find some measure of peace, so it works out.

*** 

Ginny gets called up a few weeks into the season when their regular closer, Tommy, gets knocked out with an injury. 

_A succubus in Chicago_ is what passes through the lockerroom grapevine, though the official story is reconstructive elbow surgery. 

Tommy will be out for months, maybe longer. He might _never_ come back.

Ginny sets up in an empty locker and looks around the clubhouse but no one will make eye contact with her. The place is steeped in shadows, somber and mournful in the wake of Tommy’s injury. It’s seriously giving off some bad energy.

She lights some candles and incense and places them in her locker. 

One of the candles flickers and sputters out. 

Ginny pulls her lighter back out and re-lights it.

A gust of hot air brushes against her cheek and Ginny whirls around to find herself nearly nose-to-nose with Mike Lawson. 

“Fire hazard,” he says.

“It’s to clear out the bad energy.” Ginny turns back around and pulls out her bag, digging out a silver cross, a dagger, and a yellowed, faded picture of her dad. She quietly arranges the items around the candles.

“Bad energy from what?” Mike asks. 

“Tommy,” Ginny replies. She looks over her shoulder at him. “I dunno if he cursed the place before he left or what, but I’m getting some seriously bad vibes from his locker.”

They both look over at Tommy’s empty locker. There’s a strip of pale wood where his nameplate was once nailed. 

Mike reaches up and rakes his fingers through his beard. “Well,” he says, then pauses. After a moment, he starts up again. “Just so you know, I’m not gonna take it easy on you ’cause you’re a—”

“A girl?” Ginny cuts in, caustically.

“A rookie,” Mike finishes, giving her a wry smile. He leans in and claps her on the shoulder. “This ain’t an easy job, Baker. But the front office thinks you can do it.”

“You don’t,” she says. 

Mike _hmph_ s, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “Let’s just say I’m reserving judgement.” 

*** 

Ginny’s first kill comes in Los Angeles. 

There aren’t many ghosts in Chavez Ravine, for whatever reason. This particular ghost only seems to come out when the Padres are in town. It has some connection to the two teams, though Ginny was never able to pinpoint exactly what that connection was. And she supposes it doesn’t really matter, in the end. Her only job is to eliminate the threat. To “close” the game, so to speak.

Ginny spends most of the afternoon before her start stalking the hallways for the ghost, a Super Soaker of holy water strapped to her back. The holy water won’t have much effect on a Jewish or Muslim ghost—she has no idea what’ll happen if she encounters an atheist ghost—but Ginny supposes she’ll cross that bridge when she gets to it.

Most of her teammates are going through their afternoon routines. Mike is a napper so he’s napping, Stubbs and Sonny and Butch are playing a hand of Uno, and Voorhees and Javanes are in the sauna. Ginny’s pregame routine is this: stalking the dark, silent subterranean corridors of Dodger Stadium for a ghost.

She can hear noise in the distance, though at first Ginny can’t be too sure what it is. Then, as she gets closer and closer, the sound becomes more and more distinct. Ginny pulls her Super Soaker off her shoulder.

Ginny rounds the corner and nearly stumbles into an unnaturally pale little boy, clad in a Matt Kemp shrisey and jeans with torn knees. He has dark circles under his eyes and Ginny notes, grimly, that his nails are torn and bloodied.

“What’s your name?” she asks, her breath chilling almost as soon as she opens her mouth. 

The little boy looks up at her. “David,” he says. “I’m lost. I want my mommy.”

Ginny hadn’t been prepared to deal with a ghost this young, and certainly not one that suffered whatever terrible fate David had. 

“David, you know you can’t stay,” Ginny says, gently, getting on a knee in front of him. She lays her Super Soaker on the concrete. “I can help you, though.”

“I want Mommy,” David hiccups, sniffling and wiping his runny nose on his arm. “You know where Mommy is.”

David reaches out for her, the tips of his fingers brushing against the back of Ginny’s hand. Something burns through her and Ginny screams, trying to jerk her hand back, but David tightens his grip around her. 

Ginny gropes for her water gun but kicks it away in her panic. 

“David, stop. I can’t—” Ginny struggles to twist out of the ghost’s ironclad grip. 

Ginny hears the sound of footsteps and looks up to see a crowbar arcing down over her head. Ginny cries out and covers her head with her arm, but when the pain fails to come she looks up.

Mike stares down at her, the crowbar resting over his shoulder. The ghost is gone. 

“W—what happened?” Ginny stammers, getting up and brushing her hands off on her knees. She looks around, but there’s no sign of David.

“Iron,” he says, gesturing to the crowbar. “It repels them. He’ll be back, probably. But so will we.”

Ginny bends down and picks up her Super Soaker of holy water. “I didn’t get the job done,” she says, glumly. The failure hollows her out, cores her like an apple. “My first mission and I failed.”

Mike reaches out and squeezes her shoulder. “It happens to the best of them,” he says, reassuringly. “Mickey Mantle fucked up three times before he notched his first kill.”

Ginny laughs and sweeps her hair out of her face. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“It’s a lot of pressure,” Mike admits, as he guides Ginny back to the lockerroom. “But everyone believes in you. The front office wouldn’t have brought you up if they didn’t.”

Ginny looks up at him and studies his face for a moment. “Do I detect a smile on your face?”

“Who, me? I never smile.” He smiles and squeezes her shoulder, then slips his hand away. “Let’s get ready for the game, Baker.”

“Oh, yeah. The game,” Ginny says. She’d almost forgotten about the game. 

Ginny suits up at her locker and, a couple hours later, trots onto the mound with the rest of the team at her back.

She can sense something—a presence—in the stands. It’s indistinct and hazy, like a wisp of smoke or a tendril of memory, a half-forgotten dream. But it’s there, somewhere.

Her hand burns and she looks down at it. There are faint marks where the ghost grabbed onto her earlier in the afternoon.

Ginny shrugs the feeling off and swipes her cleat over the rubber. When she looks up, she sights Mike sixty feet, six inches away from her, his glove open and waiting. 

Ginny scoops a baseball up off the mound and wraps her fingers around it. The ball is solid, cork and cowhide and 108 stitches. 

Baseball never changes.

Ginny tosses a few warmup pitches and then she’s good to go.

*** 

There are other ghosts in other towns. Other ballparks. 

Ginny gets her first official kill in Miami. Apparently the homerun sculpture was haunted the whole time. How very _Marlins_.

After Ginny eliminates the threat in Miami, things go a little dormant until an interleague trip into Boston. She smokes out a vengeful spirit trapped in the Green Monster, and then a ghoul in Tampa. She takes down a ghost in Detroit, two revenants in Cincinnati, and a particularly nasty incubus that had set up shop in Citi Field.

By the midway point of the season, Ginny has ten confirmed kills since her call-up. They’re whispering about her for an All-Star Game spot _and_ Rookie of the Year. 

This life is not without its drawbacks of course. She had a chunk taken out of her shoulder—thanks to the Tampa ghoul—and a water spirit in San Francisco almost successfully drowned her. They had to put her on the disabled list for nearly a month after a ghost wrenched her shoulder. Now, every time it’s going to rain Ginny gets an ache. 

She can’t tell anyone what she does. She sneaks around so much, haunting as much as she’s haunted, that her boyfriend Noah bails after a couple months. He thinks she’s been cheating on her, but she’s really been training and hunting with Mike. 

Noah wouldn’t have understood, she tells herself. Eventually, she says it enough that she starts believing it.

It’s a small price to pay, Ginny supposes. 

This is what she was born to do.


End file.
